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Revista Interamericana de Bibliotecología ISSN: 0120-0976 Escuela Interamericana de Bibliotecología Gasparotto, Melissa Using Google’s Custom Search Engine Product to Discover Scholarly Open Access and Cost-Free eBooks from Latin America Revista Interamericana de Bibliotecología, vol. 41, no. 2, 2018, May-August, pp. 153-166 Escuela Interamericana de Bibliotecología DOI: https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.rib.v41n2a04 Available in: https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=179056423004 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System Redalyc More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America and the Caribbean, Spain and Journal's webpage in redalyc.org Portugal Project academic non-profit, developed under the open access initiative Using Google’s Custom Search Engine Product to Discover Scholarly Open Access and Cost-Free eBooks from Latin America* Abstract Many Latin American scholarly monographs are available for free to read and download in a scattered fashion across the web, hosted on educational, institutional and government websites as well as commercial websites and publishing platforms. There is as of yet no single way to identify all of this content at once, but web-based discovery leveraging existing search engine indexing would seem to be a likely option. This case study suggests and evaluates one such method for discovery of open access and other cost-free scholarly monographs produced in Latin America. One possible configuration of Google’s Custom Search Engine product is proposed and evaluated, and findings suggest its usefulness for a variety of applications, including for collection development, the preparation of thematic research guides with open content, and the enrichment of existing lists of open access eBook sources from Latin America. Unlike existing open access eBook portals, which search across known collections of such materials, search portals such as the one proposed allow users to search across the entire web to uncover scholarly free eBook sources that were previously unknown to them alongside known content sources, a key advantage to this method of discovery. The results further suggest the importance of pursuing discovery of these monograph titles outside established known collections, as an astonishing 45 % of all monographs identified through the Custom Search Engine portal were not discoverable in any edition, print or electronic, through WorldCat, and only 27 % were indexed by Google Books. Additionally, the low number of these eBook titles hosted in preservation-worthy repositories raises cause for concern about their long-term digital availability. Keywords: Open Access, eBooks, scholarly monographs, search engines; Latin America. Melissa Gasparotto Cómo citar este artículo: Gasparotto, M. (2018). Using Google’s Custom Search Assistant Director for Research Services Engine Product to Discover Scholarly Open Access and Cost-Free eBooks from at The New York Public Library Research Latin America. Revista Interamericana de Bibliotecología, 41(2), 153-166. doi: 10.17533/ Libraries. Master of Science in Library udea.rib.v41n2a04 and Information Science from Long Island University and Master of Arts in Latin Recibido: 2017/08/06 / Aceptado: 2017/12/11 American and Caribbean Studies from New York University. * This project was completed with support from the Aresty Research Center at Rutgers Uni- [email protected] versity. The author gratefully acknowledges research assistant Harry Nicolau for his help with orcid.org/0000-0002-3048-0282 data collection. Rev. Interam. Bibliot. Medellín (Colombia) Vol. 41, número 2/mayo-agosto 2018 pp. 153-166 ISSN 0120-0976 / ISSN (en línea) 2538-9866 153 Uso de la plataforma Google’s 1. Introduction Custom Search Engine para The idea of open access monograph discovery and descubrir fuentes académicas collection building in Latin American and Area Studies is hardly new. As digital library and cultu- de acceso abierto y libros ral heritage institution repositories have grown in electrónicos gratuitos de size and prominence, so too has the interest in pu- América Latina lling them together for ease of discovery alongside related collections. In Spain, the impressive Biblio- Resumen teca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes includes dozens of thematic collections of full-text scholarly Latin Muchas monografías académicas de América Latina están American and Iberian content including articles, disponibles para leer y descargar gratuitamente, dispersas en books, and recordings. The CLACSO and FLACSO la web, alojadas en sitios educativos, institucionales y guber- digital libraries pull together open access scholarly namentales, así como en sitios web comerciales y plataformas monographs produced by multiple regional affiliates de publicación. Aún no existe una forma única de identificar todo este contenido a la vez, pero el descubrimiento basa- under a single portal. Europe-wide efforts include do en la web para potenciar el uso de la indexación de los Europeana, which includes digital collections from motores de búsqueda existentes parece ser una alternativa. dozens of libraries, museums, and other national Este estudio de caso sugiere y evalúa uno de estos métodos institutions. HathiTrust contains a sizable subset of para el descubrimiento de acceso abierto y otras monogra- Latin American and Iberian content. And of course, fías académicas gratuitas producidas en América Latina. En the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and the este trabajo, se propone y se evalúa una configuración posi- OAPEN Library are important aggregators of scho- ble de la plataforma Google’s Custom Search Engine, y los larly open access eBooks, although they remain small hallazgos sugieren su utilidad para una variedad de aplica- in size. All of these projects include known OA titles ciones, incluido el desarrollo de colecciones, la preparación de guías temáticas de investigación con contenido abierto, y currently available in existing collections, begging [Melissa Gasparotto] el enriquecimiento de listas existentes de libros electrónicos the question: what unaggregated content available de acceso abierto de América Latina. A diferencia de los por- in digital form might be missing from such compi- tales de eBook de acceso abierto, que buscan en colecciones lations? conocidas dichos materiales, las plataformas de búsqueda como la que se propone en este trabajo permiten a los usua- A growing trend has drawn attention to an additio- rios buscar en toda la web para descubrir fuentes académicas nal source of digital scholarly monographs in need gratuitas de libros electrónicos, que antes eran desconoci- of discovery: publications made available for free das, además de buscar en las fuentes de contenido conocidas, reading, and often for free download, produced by una ventaja clave para este método de descubrimiento. Los Latin American independent and university publi- resultados sugieren, además, la importancia de buscar estos shers, cultural heritage institutions and government títulos monográficos fuera de las colecciones establecidas ya conocidas, pues un asombroso 45 % de todas las monografías agencies and secretariats. Because the number of identificadas a través de la plataforma Custom Search Engine publishers participating in these activities is large no fueron detectables en ninguna edición, impresa o electró- when viewed across the region, web-based disco- nica, a través de WorldCat, y solo 27 % fueron indexadas very would appear to be a likely solution for these por Google Books. Además, el bajo número de estos libros monographs. However, search engines generally lack electrónicos alojados en repositorios dignos de preservación the user-controlled refinements necessary to restrict plantea motivos de preocupación sobre su disponibilidad di- results to quality open scholarly monograph output, gital a largo plazo. and searching without these refinements results in Palabras clave: acceso abierto, libros electrónicos, mongrafías too many unrelated websites to be useful for eBook académicas, buscadores, América Latina. discovery. 154 Rev. Interam. Bibliot. Medellín (Colombia) Vol. 41, número 2/mayo-agosto 2018 pp. 153-166 ISSN 0120-0976 / ISSN (en línea) 2538-9866 This paper proposes options for Latin American OA and humanities in other world regions unaddressed” and cost-free1 scholarly monograph discovery utilizing (p. 174). Lourdes Gutiérrez-Palacios (2012) also obser- a Google product known as Custom Search Engine ves the science-heavy focus of major commercial eBook (CSE) to create customized search portals. Unlike vendors, adding that these aggregators provide access the digital collections mentioned above, which search to primarily English-language content (p. 9). Suzan- across discrete existing known collections, search por- ne M. Ward, Robert S. Freeman and Judith M. Nixon tals and techniques such as those proposed allow users (2015) concur, noting that these issues together pose a to search across the entire web to uncover scholarly barrier to building global academic eBook collections free eBook sources that were previously unknown to (p. 4). For the purpose of Latin American eBook collec- them alongside known content sources, a key advanta- tion development, then, one major challenge is the lack ge to this method of discovery. of available content for acquisition through standard library-vendor routes. 2. Library Collections and the Latin Given the challenges associated with insufficient re- American eBook Landscape presentation of global